On Saturday the Kentucky Wildcats opened the 2023 season with a win over the Ball State Cardinals. Early season jitters created some mistakes but there were positive signs for the team to build on going forward. Let’s look at the most important things from each unit over the weekend and what it might mean going forward.
Offense
There was plenty of handwringing at HT regarding the Kentucky offense and some of it was justified. All offseason we heard how good Leary was, but his stat-line was less than impressive and outside of a big Dane Key play there wasn’t much to get excited about. Things improved in the 2nd half and there were some very real positives to take (as well as a lot of things that need work).
Leary finished the game 18/31 for 241 yards with 1 TD and 1 INT which isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire, but context is needed. Leary only played 6 games last season and is coming off off-season shoulder surgery so some rustiness should probably be expected. There were enough good throws for me to still feel confident and the 2nd half he was far more efficient. He ended the first half 8/20 for 144 yards but was 10/11 in the 2nd half with 97 yards and 1 TD. Leary was able to spread the ball around to 7 different receivers and Dane Key looks like he’s ready to blossom into a star with Barion Brown/Tayvion Robinson both showing flashes of explosiveness. In my opinion we’d have to go back to 2007 (Johnson, Burton, and Lyons Jr.) since Kentucky has had this much talent at WR.
The OL didn’t exactly dominate but there are no alarm bells ringing the way there were last year against Miami (OH). They only allowed one sack officially but there were a few breakdowns and too many TFL allowed for my liking (4). I wrote in the Ball State preview back in July that the Cardinals’ front 7 would be a decent and experienced test and they did just that.
The most worrying thing about the OL is the injuries that are piling up. Having already lost Ben Christman and Nik Hall seeing LG Kenneth Horsey going down was a gut punch. It has since been announced that the injury wasn’t as bad as it looked, and it must be said that WVU transfer Dylan Ray stepped in nicely. The OL has a lot of things to clean up so having a guy drop is never good but it does present an opportunity to re-build some depth against EKU and Akron.
Things weren’t all bad with the OL, they did open enough holes for Ray Davis to get over the century mark on just 14 carries and 2 TD. He averaged 8 yards per carry and he looked every bit the part with good vision and even able to catch some balls out of the backfield.
The underlying metrics didn’t love that offensive performance from Kentucky but there were some positives. 7 yards per play on offense put Kentucky in the 80th percentile and .19 EPA/Play put the Cats in the 78th percentile on that metric. Overall the final stats were skewed with the few number of plays Kentucky ran on offense (59 compared to Ball State’s 84) so it’s hard to read too much into the advanced stats on that side of the football.
Defense
On defense, Kentucky looked like a traditional Stoops defense. They stopped the run at a high level (held Ball State to just 72 yards on the ground on 41 attempts) and limited explosive plays by keeping everything in front of them.
Deon Walker dominated the line of scrimmage and allowed Trevin Wallace, Alex Afari, JJ Weaver, and Kahlil Saunders to create havoc in the backfield. 3 sacks and 9 TFL is solid, especially when you account for Brad White calling a vanilla defense (which is normal in these early non-conference games). Would still like to see Kentucky get more pressure on the QB but some of that is a by-product of a Stoops defense.
There are lots of things that need to be cleaned up, especially with the secondary in zone coverage (though Zion Childress was robbed of an INT due to a bogus PI call) but Stoops has earned the benefit of doubt on this side of the ball. It seems like every year there are a few concerning things early in the season only for them to ironed out by the time SEC play rolls around. It’s not really a sexy brand of defense but it’s been effective for Kentucky.
Special Teams
Other than OL special teams were the biggest Achilles heel for Kentucky Football in 2022. With bad snaps, missed kicks, bad decisions on fielding punts, poor blocking on returns, etc. it was a total disaster. This year the improvement was refreshing. There was one high snap on a FG but it was handled and Georgia Southern transfer Alex Raynor had a good day kicking. He finished 3/3 on FG with a long of 46 and 5/5 on XP.
Punter Wilson Berry only had two punts, but both were solid, and the coverage was good enough. Hopefully we don’t need to see much of Berry the next month or so but it’s good to know that he can be effective because in the grind of the SEC he’ll become important.
We also got a special teams score with excellent blocking that let Brown hit his stride early. I would imagine that is the last time Brown gets a returnable kick this season.
Final Thoughts
Stoops was livid in the postgame and I think that is a good sign. I’m not sure we ever saw that kind of anger from him at all last season even after the NIU game which was the point we all should have known something was wrong. To me that says he knows this team is good enough to do something special, but he can’t count on things just “coming together” like it seemed we were waiting for last year.
We won’t learn much from the EKU game (unless things go badly) but I do expect we’ll see a cleaner game against the Colonels. Nobody wants to play their best game of the season in Week 1 and if Stoops were honest, I’d bet he was secretly happy that he has a lot of teaching moments and still won by 30.
